The extinction mechanism of a CH4/N-2-air counterflow nonpremixed flame interacting with a single vortex was numerically studied. An augmented reduced mechanism was used to treat the CH4 oxidation reactions. The contribution of each term in the energy and the OH species equations were evaluated to investigate the unsteady extinction mechanism of nonpremixed flame. The flame temperature began to decrease due to the convection heat loss when the flame interacted with a vortex. The investigation of the radical behavior during the flame-vortex interaction process also provided useful information on the unsteady extinction mechanism. The OH radical concentration could be used as a good tracer of the state of the unsteady extinction of nonpremixed flame. The reduction mechanism of OH concentration was confirmed by analyzing the contribution of each term in the OH species equation. At initial stage of flame-vortex interaction, the OH production and consumption rates increased gradually, while the OH concentration was kept nearly constant. Near the extinction limit, the OH production rate decreased rapidly due to the low flame temperature, and the balance between the OH production and OH consumption by diffusion could not be maintained. The unsteady nonpremixed flame interacting with a vortex under the conditions of regime (V) shown in the spectral combustion diagram [Thevenin, D., Renard, P.H., Fiechtner, G.J., Gord, J.R., Rolon, J.C., 2000. Regimes of non-premixed flame-vortex interactions. Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 28, 2101-2108.] was finally extinguished due to low reactivity, which was induced by the low flame temperature. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.